We wanted to test whether gamifying giving might engage young men in giving for Red Nose Day 2013, by creating ‘Britain’s Biggest Fart App’, a smartphone based game which enables you to make a friend’s phone fart (whilst making an SMS donation to Comic Relief).

Downloaded 100,000 times for Red Nose Day, 60% of game players were under 30 and 53% of them men and almost half were first time fundraisers.

It’s about understanding your audience (you do have a target audience in mind and you know how and where to find them right?).

Go where your audience lives

Think about who you are targeting.

What interests them, how do they use technology, what’s the pattern of their daily life, what relationships do they have between their peers and what do they usually think of charity?

We knew from early research the young men (under 35) that we were targeting were pretty resistant to traditional charity messages but liked gameplay, were addicted to their mobiles and were very social.

We tested that with these quick concept ads on facebook (the second one got three times the click through with men 25-35 than the first).

One click to download

If our marketing objective wasn’t clicks but to get users to download the app – we had to be in the medium they used (mobile) where they could initiate a download in one click.

More tightly targeted mobile advertising delivered a click through of between 0.41% to 1.25% vs traditional web advertising click through of 0.10% – 0.15%.

Mobile ad space is pretty small, so we worked with the team at M&C Saatchi Mobile to push creative boundaries – using a mixture of animated mobile ads like this:

…. and fully interactive mobiles ads which expand to occupy full screen and allowed players to take a quiz to see what kind of fart they were – so they could experience all the fun of the game before they downloaded. We believe the combination of this creative approach and better targeting on mobile explains the higher click through rates described above.

Paid media ‘cut through’ and got us noticed

In a world of a million apps it’s hard to cut through.

We decided to concentrate our paid advertising into two short sharp bursts, using ‘app of the day’ service App Gratis and later Surikate alongside other mobile advertising to cut through, drive up rankings in the app store and get noticed.

It shows the success of this strategy. It also shows how quickly every new app fades from the top of the table. From No 1 to the entertainment category to 178th in 7 days. The app store really is that harsh.

It’s another reason to test and test with consumers before you set out to create your ad driven spike of consumer interest.

Date

Overall

Entertainment

16-Feb-13

–

856

17-Feb-13

–

550

18-Feb-13

–

425

19-Feb-13

14

1

20-Feb-13

14

1

21-Feb-13

16

1

22-Feb-13

21

2

23-Feb-13

29

3

24-Feb-13

34

4

25-Feb-13

52

5

26-Feb-13

91

16

27-Feb-13

241

33

28-Feb-13

571

65

01-Mar-13

1106

131

02-Mar-13

1498

172

03-Mar-13

–

176

04-Mar-13

–

178

05-Mar-13

–

178

06-Mar-13

–

162

07-Mar-13

1447

163

08-Mar-13

1303

143

09-Mar-13

1474

169

10-Mar-13

–

169

11-Mar-13

–

176

12-Mar-13

–

174

13-Mar-13

1250

137

14-Mar-13

14

2

15-Mar-13

20

2

Social media, sharing and word of mouth delivered 80% of downloads

Our paid media delivered a fifth of the total downloads.

Together App Gratis and Surikate drove 14,000 downloads and created an immediate impact. Direct click throughs from other mobile advertising drove another 4-5,000.

In terms of cost we focused on a CPD (cost per download) rather than clicks. The majority of downloads were delivered for a CPD of between £1.61 and £3.49.

This got the ball rolling and social media, in app recommendation and word of mouth built momentum and generated the remaining four fifths of downloads. Comic Relief’s large following on Twitter and Facebook with many people of the key demographic will have undoubtedly helped.

Over the last year TheGivingLab has worked with over 300 students and their parents and teachers from schools of all types in London, Manchester and Newcastle to understand whether fundraising in schools still looks like Grange Hill, or whether it’s gone digital.

Here’s how teenagers told us they were using tech

If students are digital, why isn’t schools fundraising digital?

In a lot of schools, fundraising might well be familiar to Tucker and the gang and their 1970’s fundraising efforts at Grange Hill. Things are changing, but schools are complex eco-systems and several key themes came up again and again which prevent fundraising taking advantage of digital innovation at every stage.

Many students have access to digital tech, but don’t use it often to pay or donate (especially mobile). Parents and students are wary of mobile payment, worrying about unexplained or unexpected costs.

Most schools are fighting to stop students using mobiles in school time and don’t want to encourage their use at any point, even for creating content or spreading the word.

For many teachers collecting cash is just easier than creating an online account, logging on and checking who has paid. So cash giving remains king.

Most schools have restricted internet access, which makes accessing new online services difficult for many schools, with individual teachers having to apply to have sites unblocked.

Many (often older) teachers didn’t feel comfortable with social media and other online technologies and felt unsure about using digital technology in the classroom.

Created by TheGivingLab team, SeeTheDifference was a pioneering UK crowdfunding site which aimed to bring transparency to giving. Find out how it started here.

At the heart of SeeTheDifference was a desire to harness social media for good, to inspire people to share great charity content, engage others and of course to give. The team created heaps of content. But we needed to know what content was social.

Here’s our …

… most shared.

Social media loves topical. It’s a buzz passing on hot, exclusive breaking news. We scored big with a project with Map Action who were helping the Japanese Tsunani relief efforts in Japan within 24 hours. The project offered insight and feedback from the ground in almost realtime. It was shared by thousands and the appeal was fully funded in a week.

… most engaged

Co-create with the audience for fun. In this great project to refurbish and recycle UK bikes to Africa we came across a passionate online cycling community and asked them to share pictures of them on biking adventures – and we added them to the film – and (as we hoped) they shared the film in social media. This meant is wasn’t a charity film anymore but ‘the film I’m in, see if you can spot my bike’. More fun for the sender and more relevant to their friends.

… most commented

We used to sit every week, head in hands thinking up smart new ideas for social media, usually coming up with ever more complex (and crazy) ideas, the maddest of which involved carving a sculpture of Kate and Will’s out of a 6 foot block of cheddar for Royal Wedding week.

We learnt simple wins. You can beat a bad pun.

We posted comedy bear pics for Animals Asia, a bear rescue charity and asked people to write captions all for the grand prize of a daily jar of honey. Bad puns poured in, honey poured out and word spread about their amazing work. We even treated the crowd to a jar of exclusive honey from Pitcairn Island.

If 90% of social media is fun between friends, is your social media fun?

We like making our friends smile (that’s why we post all those baby pics right and those damn cat photos). We share experiences and cement social bonds. Sometimes it’s cool to be topical, occasionally we get angry.

Slapping a big fat charity message about poverty into social media is kinda tricky. Try slipping this into a conversation right now ‘how was your last holiday? Oh and did you know 10,000 children are injured by landmines every month’. Hmm tricky.

That’s why we’re big fans of humour, being relevant to the audience and co-creating content with them ….and never underestimate the fun BIG BAD BEAR PUN.

If your charity wants co-create with your audience or make things a bit more fun online, drop us a line : change@thegivinglab.org